Only in France - pig's entrails sold in vending machines

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If you suddenly get the urge to cook an entrecôte steak in the middle of the night, then Paris can now officially accommodate your urges.

If you’re near 120 Rue de Charonne in the 11th at 1am and feel a bit peckish then pop to the vending machine outside the Basque butcher named “L’ami Txulette”.

It’s officially the first 24-hour meat vending machine in Paris.

"We offer a selection of products that we prepare and package ourselves,” said butcher Florence Pouzol.

In the machine you find everything from Carpaccio de Boeuf at €6, a tender 250g faux-filet steak for €8, pork chops for €5 but also Bayonne ham from the Basque country, chicken and even eggs.

Payment can be made by cash but if you've got any beef with that, you can pay by credit card.

The installation of the meat vending machine, the fifth on the whole country, continues a long a trend in France of making sure the public can get their fix of Gallic grub 24 hours a day.

In 2011 Paris got its first 24-hour baguette dispenser when Jean-Louis Hecht put one next to his bakery in the 19th arrondissement.

Dismissing the notion that selling bread in automatic dispensers was tantamount to sacrilege for the French, he said: "This is the bakery of tomorrow. It is answering a real need. To me it's a public utility."

No pain, no gain, some would say.

And it appears there’s a real need to get all kinds of classic French products throughout the night - or at least once the shops are closed, which to be fair is quite often.

In recent months a cheese monger in the town of Pontalier in the eastern département of the Doubs installed a cheese vending machine, open day and night for local fromage addicts.

Cheeses such as Comté, Mont d’Or, morbier and raclette are all available and given that the shop is only open until 3.30pm normally it’s hardly an emmental idea.

“All the cheeses are packaged and sold at the same price as in the shop," said the owner Jean-Noël Jeannin.

The newspaper L'Est Republican notes that there are several other cheesy vending machines in towns around the area, which have proved a success.

But perhaps the most bizarre of the automatic dispensers to be set up is the one in the town of Mennetou-sur-Cher in central France.

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In January the local delicatessen invested in an automatic dispenser so he could sell andouillette.

So it's offally good news for anyone with a late night craving for pig’s intestines and colon, who can now have their desire satisfied.

“The andouillettes of Mennetou have a great reputation. People come from afar to buy them,” explained the delicatessen Pascal Bidron.

“We see people who walk by on Sunday afternoon, they stop in front of the shop and find that unfortunately it's closed... But we can't work seven days a week,” he said.

Which is probably why we don’t see as many vending machines in America or the UK.